Good points 40hz (and I can finally see your new avatar ). I think having a way to tag or even more clearly indicate "unsupported" apps or "infrequent support" or something would be good. It would be a shame to not list them at all but I agree that some way to make it clear to people that the app is unlikely to be fixed if there is a bug would be good.

The only thing I'm personally not sure of is how to implement the feedback process and systems. Comments in e.g. WP are more amenable to reviews (e.g. "love this app!"), not so much to bug reporting or tracking. One thought was to have a full sub-forum or even just a single discussion thread for each app in the forum and just link from the app's directory entry. That gives us the full capability of the forums for formatting, discussion, etc. I don't think a formal bug tracker is needed for 90% of the software that will be listed. The rest can use our existing Redmine setup that devs have access to. The question remains though whether a simple "commenting" functionality is enough, or if we should continue to rely on the forums for at least the major part of the actual *discussion*.

My idea was to disable the built-in WP commenting system and direct any discussions on any app to the original forum threads. My desire was to keep all discussions where they are now and not split them between the forum and the directory.

Furthermore, by doing it this way, there would be no chance of spam in the directory, no useless "nice app" comments, and only one place for a developer to have to subscribe to keep up to date with new comments (the forum thread)

Providing the forum links in the PAD files, as well as links to the author's profile, and donate links, would be a good use of the extensions that Renegade spoke of here.

I did want to provide some way for users to give a little non-text feedback, without having to register on the forum. I figured I'd do that with a star rating system. It seems to be working out pretty good on my book directory. People that wouldn't consider taking the time to register or write a comment can just click a star and go about their lives.

With the additional exposure a directory may bring, some of the old "publish & forget" days may be coming to an end. Since most of them do this for free and in their spare time, it may get to be a "job" staying on top of the comments. Especially if a title gets popular due to wider exposure and generates a lot of feedback asking for responses from the author.

I had thought about this, and part of the reason for the directory is to give all the forgotten gems on the forum the exposure they deserve.

I think every author posted their apps knowing there was a chance it could become popular. But if responding to users becomes too much of a chore for any developer, all they would have to do is let us know and we can either take advantage of the fact that we have a whole community here and pitch in, helping with answering questions (like we have been doing for Skrommel's stuff, while he has been away building his new house), or make a note in the directory listing that the app is no longer supported (in extreme cases).

App, sounds like you have a pretty good plan going. I'm definitely in favor of seeing you run with your intended approach at this point. WP may not be "the best thing" for this, but until we have something better I suspect it will be a "pretty darn good thing" for this, and if it lasts only a year it will have been worth it. My guess it will realistically be at least that long before a truly superior alternative is implemented.

I worry this kind of thing would lead us to over-complication.. Let's try to keep this as simple as we possibly can while trying for most of the functionality we think is important. I don't think we have so much software that we need to get crazy with letting people filter and sort entries, etc. A good compromise might simply be a simple tagging system, and a way to present a page of software with that tag -- then we could create arbitrary collections using tags.

Well, I didn't have anything complicated in mind. A tagging system is basically the same idea, but, yes, more basic.

IMO, if someone ever went to a library to get a book or even searched Google, that same someone should be able to filter a list by author, title, tag or whatever.

The only thing I'm personally not sure of is how to implement the feedback process and systems.

Why does this have to be the one stop shop for all of this? We've been using redmine for a while with pretty good results- why not just link to the redmine area from the software directory? Perhaps even remove the ability to comment, since this is to be a directory, and instead direct comments to the forum?

I'm not sure about this, but I'll just call to your attention that it'd be nice if this software repository could include not only full apps, but also coding snacks and even code samples. It should be easy to upload any of the three, but we can't really expect small coding snacks or code samples to include screenshots and stuff like that. Truth is even though skwire has been doing a great job posting coding snacks that look like full apps, for me it's a pain to create icons and screenshots and etc.

On the other hand, we wouldn't want full apps to be displayed at the same level as these small coding snacks.

I'm not sure about this, but I'll just call to your attention that it'd be nice if this software repository could include not only full apps, but also coding snacks and even code samples. It should be easy to upload any of the three, but we can't really expect small coding snacks or code samples to include screenshots and stuff like that. Truth is even though skwire has been doing a great job posting coding snacks that look like full apps, for me it's a pain to create icons and screenshots and etc.

I'm sure there would be members more than willing to help you with some of that if you'd like. Not every member who would like to get involved is a coder. But they may have other skills and talents (art, writing, alpha/beta testing) that could add value to the work of the programmers. For example, many FSF projects benefit immensely from people who are willing write documentation, design interfaces, and do all those other tasks the average programmer has little interest in doing, but which still need to be done.

I'm not sure about this, but I'll just call to your attention that it'd be nice if this software repository could include not only full apps, but also coding snacks and even code samples. It should be easy to upload any of the three, but we can't really expect small coding snacks or code samples to include screenshots and stuff like that. Truth is even though skwire has been doing a great job posting coding snacks that look like full apps, for me it's a pain to create icons and screenshots and etc.

I'm sure there would be members more than willing to help you with some of that if you'd like. Not every member who would like to get involved is a coder. But they may have other skills and talents (art, writing, alpha/beta testing) that could add value to the work of the programmers. For example, many FSF projects benefit immensely from people who are willing write documentation, design interfaces, and do all those other tasks the average programmer has little interest in doing, but which still need to be done.

Why not assemble a small team to assist you when and as needed?

Just a thought.

Now, see, that's another reason why I am perfect for this...

I do icons and stuff and am willing to work with any coding snacks author to assemble together everything needed for their directory entries....I am your small team.

Well, mouser doesn't want me to do it. He thinks it would be better to move the whole site to a CMS, and while I may be asked for my opinion on some things, I probably won't be involved in the actual work of doing it.

Whatever gets implemented, there are a couple of things I'd like to retain from my current customized HTML downloads page: (1) the PHP-powered downloads counters (see left-most column in screenshot), and (2) the mini-images that link to full-size screenshots (see right-most column in screenshot):

kyrathaba, there may have been a slight misunderstanding. This thread was related to a software directory on the main DC site, not any proposed changes to member pages.

The idea was something PAD driven so that developers could have control over their listings and easily be able to keep them up to date, without having to actually access the CMS, no matter where they were hosting their files. It would be much the same way as most of the download sites work, but instead of filling it with software from everywhere on the web, it would be limited to software from the DC community.

Thanks for the clarification, app103. So member pages would not be directly affected; rather, members who've created free-/donation-ware would be asked to add their software to the DC software directory. I for one look forward to this, as I think such a site-wide directory that includes members' software would substantially enhance the visibility of those members' programs who are not major contributors.

Thanks for the clarification, app103. So member pages would not be directly affected; rather, members who've created free-/donation-ware would be asked to add their software to the DC software directory. I for one look forward to this, as I think such a site-wide directory that includes members' software would substantially enhance the visibility of those members' programs who are not major contributors.

yes. It would not only be an issue of increased visibility, but make it much easier for us to keep the information up to date, highlight new releases, and help visitors to find and discover software made by DC.